Cather RC passage (Pt57) Forum

[dontsaywhatyoumean]

Did anyone else find that this passage felt difficult to read, but that the questions weren't actually necessarily THAT difficult (or maybe particularly difficult at all)? It was more the reading?

It just felt like the one of the passages in this passage or possibly both, had a bunch of unclearly (or not really) related statements.

The whole time I was struggling to be confident in what the specific point was to each passage. I managed to get everything right, but it took me about 13 minutes, and I had to rush through the last passage in the section.

[Blueprint Mithun]

Did anyone else find that this passage felt difficult to read, but that the questions weren't actually necessarily THAT difficult (or maybe particularly difficult at all)? It was more the reading?

It just felt like the one of the passages in this passage or possibly both, had a bunch of unclearly (or not really) related statements.

The whole time I was struggling to be confident in what the specific point was to each passage. I managed to get everything right, but it took me about 13 minutes, and I had to rush through the last passage in the section.

I think this is a very interesting comparative passage, and it's also one that we teach in the Blueprint curriculum. Neither of the two passages are very explicit about what the main point is. To someone familiar with literary/art criticism, this might not seem too strange, but it definitely takes a bit of analysis.

Both passages are concerned with Cather's style, but they take different approaches to it. The first one describes a set of influences that shaped her style (Russian writers) and her own perspective with her approach. She sought to establish a mood in her writing, and used implicit connections between her characters' inner states and the physical environment around them to do so, rather than explicitly describing how people felt.

The second passage introduces narratology, a framework that critics have used to describe an approach to fiction writing embraced by Cather. It should be noted that "narratology" came about in the 1960s, AFTER Cather's time, so it wasn't something that she used to describe her work. The passage concludes that Cather's work is best understood through a focus on narrative rather than novel, and that many of her critics mistook intentional stylistic choices for flaws.

Hope that summary helps!

[dontsaywhatyoumean]

Thank you Mithun, you were once again helpful.

That's what I gathered from it, and I think I gathered that early on in my reading, but I kept on rereading because it still seemed kind of aimless, at least compared to each other. It didn't really seem like the passages overall necessarily agreed or disagreed, but that perhaps they agreed on 1 or 2 things.

I just felt used to passages having more of a clear main point. What you mentioned seemed like points being made, but not necessarily the main point when I read it.

[connordalto]

Thank you Mithun, you were once again helpful.

That's what I gathered from it, and I think I gathered that early on in my reading, but I kept on rereading because it still seemed kind of aimless, at least compared to each other. It didn't really seem like the passages overall necessarily agreed or disagreed, but that perhaps they agreed on 1 or 2 things.

I just felt used to passages having more of a clear main point. What you mentioned seemed like points being made, but not necessarily the main point when I read it.

Did this section this morning... also took me forever to finish reading. And I missed -1 on it . Thought this was a pretty tough section considering you also have to get through the fractal math passage.